The Video Game Revue

Disgaea 2 - Early Impressions

I'm roughly 6 hours into Disgaea 2, and quite addicted to it so far. That's about 14 main character levels and four game chapters worth of progress. As mentioned previously, I am a big fan of the original Disgaea game, and I've found that my familiarity with the original has made Disgaea 2 that much more enjoyable. Whereas there was a constant and significant learning curve throughout the original Disgaea, with Disgaea 2 I've been able to jump right in and know a lot of useful tricks and tips right from the very beginning.

Because of the increased ease of play, I'm finding that Disgaea 2 is much less tiring than the original was. This is partly because the game's creators did manage to improve on the game system in the original game, but it's mostly because of my immediate familiarity with everything. For this reason, Disgaea 2 has taken on a delightfully fun and casual feel, like I'd expect from a Final Fantasy game. I very much doubt that this experience resembles what most newcomers to tactical RPGs would think of the game, however.

You've probably heard, and it is true that Disgaea 2 is very similar to the original game. You could almost consider it to be more like a stand-alone expansion pack with major updates to the game system--a sort of Disgaea 1.1 if you will. I don't think that it's reasonable to slam the game for this fact, though; if anything, Disgaea 2 should be praised for not mucking up a perfectly good formula.

If there's one thing that does bother me about Disgaea 2 is that the characters don't seem as good as they were in the original Disgaea (so far.) Adel and Rozalin are hard-pressed to fill in for Laharl and Etna as a protagonist/sidekick pair, but what is really harsh is the fact that Adel is basically a "good guy" whereas Laharl was delightfully wicked. Laharl's home was a castle filled with demonic minions ("vassals"--how I miss that word) and Adel's home is, well, a happy green village. I could go on, but I think that my point is solidly made.

And where the characters falter, I'm left feeling that the writing is lacking too. It's not bad at all for an RPG, and it's very much along the same lines as the other Nippon Ichi TRPGs I've played (La Pucelle Tactics, Disgaea, and Phantom Brave), but because this is a Disgaea series game, I was hoping for the same kind of humor that the original game benefitted from, and so far it's been lacking. Disgaea 2 tries to be softer and mushier--like La Pucelle Tactics and Phantom Brave are--instead of having the amusingly sarcastic tone of the original game. I used to crack up at jokes made about Mid-Boss, or how little Laharal cares about someone else's dramatic moment. Disgaea 2 is a true Nippon Ichi game, sure enough, but it doesn't quite have the same flavour as Disgaea did in terms of writing.

That having been said, the gameplay is an absolute joy, and this is basically the most fun that I've ever had playing what has been my favourite game genre this decade: Tactical RPGs. Disgaea 2 will easily go down as one of my all-time favourite PlayStation 2 games, but at this early stage, I seriously doubt that it will be able to surpass the original Disgaea due to the criticisms that I've already made.

On an entirely different note, I played a whole lot of World of WarCraft last week up through today. I took my level 14 undead Priest, Xzi, all the way up to level 22. That's a lot of WoW. I can't see myself maintaining that pace over the next week, but if I can even manage to play half that much every week, I'll make it to 60 sooner or later. It really feels as though after well over two years of owning the game, I've finally discovered it.

Sunny still plays WoW, of course. She's working on an alt--a human Paladin--and is currently at level 26. When The Burning Crusade comes out, I'm sure she'll take Chala (her lvl 60 Warrior) to level 70 in due time.

posted by Parappa @ 5:44 PM